Saturday, October 23, 2010

Mistakes Teach UsFree Gold Tips and Tricks are posted here every day. These are tried and true methods that work and speculative ideas about what could work. Learning what to do comes with also learning what not to do. Mistakes are the stepping stones to understanding. When you understand what went wrong, you can focus on preventing repeated mistakes. Here are two examples of things I've learned by screwing up.

Incorrect PricingAuction house gold making can quickly be derailed by incorrect pricing. It only takes a couple of times posting items for the wrong price to learn a quick lesson. Always check that you have posted your items at the correct price! Once I was so excited to see that the10 Icescale Leg Armor I had just posted for 225g each had all just sold out within minutes of posting. I quickly ran to the auction house to see who had bought them all only to see I had incorrectly posted them all for 25g each. Ouch! From then on, I always double check my auctions. Good thing too. I had accidentally posted a Captured Firefly for 15g instead of 15k, but caught it within seconds of posting. That could have been a huge loss as I had paid 2k for it.

Buyouts Raise PricesDon't buy out every low priced material you find. Why? I love to find great deals on the auction house. Problem is I tend to buy all of the items priced below my purchasing threshold. It took me forever to finally realize why there are only higher prices items re-listed after I do a big buyout. Duh! Now the cheapest one is above my threshold and new sellers will post their materials as close to that higher amount as possible. It pays to leave a few on the auction house at low low prices. Why? The next bot farmer who comes along will post all of his goods below the lowest price. This may lose you a few stacks of cheap materials, if another buyer snatches them up before a seller comes along, but trust me it is well worth the risk. Sometimes you can really hit it big. Just remember that every item you buy out at one price is pushing the next posters price that much higher for your next round of purchases.

10 comments:

Wow, it's lucky that you caught that Captured Firefly mistake before it was too late! I try to be very cautious when posting auctions as well, not because I've ever posted anything incorrectly myself, but because of the amount of stuff I buy that has obviously been posted incorrectly! lol :)

I'll buy something for a good deal that I know will take awhile to sell -- but if I try to do my selling when I'm bored or tired I can get frustrated and just post it for whatever I bought it for or something low so it will just sell, especially if it IS taking awhile to sell (which I knew it would).

I never considered leaving a few low priced stacks, that's not a bad tip. I found stacks of Borean Leather for 8g a stack and couldn't click fast enough to buy them all up! at 24g for 10 heavy Borean to turn into 1 Arctic Fur which is currently selling for 65g, i'm waiting for my 2.5 profit to come in now; however I probably very likely closed the Borean Leather market for several days now, as people will see a vacancy and post for much higher... Very interesting!

Nice tip on leaving a few low priced stacks. I learned that lesson the hard way too. However, I have also found that you can post items at the price you want them to set for the sellers. Using your borean example, buy them all at 8g/stack, and relist 1 stack at 10g bid only--I soon find several stacks below 10g. After you buy out your cheap mats, cancel your bid only sale if you want.

Not knowingly made the mis-priced sale for a long time and that cost me big. Although I do remember profiting from some dude that exclusively sold 264 BoE epics on my server. I just happened to spot the tanking gun on the AH for 300g along with the healing belt for the same price. I ate well that week I'll say.

As for the not buying all the cheap items, I must confess I'd never thought of the consequences of doing so, thank you.

I'll join with the others & say thank you - I too never thought of leaving a few low priced stacks there.

The other thing to watch is your bid price - I watch my buy out price carefully but missed a couple of really low bid prices - obviously the enchanters snatch those up so now I watch the bid price auctioneer wants to set as well

I made the mistake of buying out all pristine black diamonds below my threshold when the next highest price was 300% higher. Needless to say I had to wait a LONG time before any were listed below my threshold again. Thanks for reinforcing that lesson :)

P.S. Thanks for writing such a great read so regularly. I check back here every day and attribute the ability to buy 80+ PBDs in this final rush before Cata to what I've learnt here and at JMTC (and others that I don't check so often).

I happened to do the opposite the other day, I've gotten a blue drop (a cataclysm shield of some sorts) There was a price suggestion around 80G on AH and I put it up for 84G (or so I thought) The day after when I emptied my mailbox I saw that it had sold for 840G!

If you leave or create lower priced auctions to encourage posters to undercut, they don't need to be full stacks. Often 1-5 is enough to do the trick. Buy out profitable mats and then relist small quantities at the price you want others to post below.